Categories: News
      Date: 22-07-2016
     Title: Refugees at the olympics

Symbols of hope: Refugees at the Olympics

• Written by  Chris Fitch 
• Published in Refugees

18 July 2016

When the competitors of the 2016 Rio Olympics complete their opening ceremony laps of the Maracanã stadium, they will be joined by a small group walking without a national flag – refugee athletes set to make history on the global sporting stage

This story is published in the Geographical Magazine for August.

Below is an extract telling the story of one of these competitors. To read more about her and the other refugees go to the Geographical Magazine website: here

Their stories are inspiring:

Olympic swimmer, Yusra Mardini, says  “In the water there is no difference if you are a refugee, a Syrian, or a German,” Just one year ago she was fleeing for her life, risking the dangerous journey across the Aegean Sea to escape the escalating violence back in her native Syria.

Halfway between the Turkish coast and their destination of Lesbos, Greece, the engine of the flimsy boat she was packed onto with 20 other people suddenly spluttered and died. ‘There were people who didn’t know how to swim,’ recalls Mardini. With the boat completely stranded, and few other options available, she and her sister slid into the water and managed to push it the rest of the way to the island. ‘It would have been shameful if the people on our boat had drowned,’ she continues. ‘I wasn’t going to sit there and complain that I would drown.’

Mardini’s training schedule had faced unimaginable obstacles even before then.           

‘Sometimes we couldn’t train because of the war,’ she reveals. ‘Or sometimes you had training, but there was a bomb in the swimming pool.’

Today, safe from her war-torn home and living in Germany, Mardini is joining nine other displaced athletes in what is being described as one of the most remarkable teams ever to compete in Olympic history.  (Read more … )